A Modest Proposal Rhetorical Essay (50 pts) Fritsch 1 Objective: a four-paragraph essay analyzing the rhetorical devices used by Jonathan Swift in A Modest Proposal Structure: 1. Mini Introduction with thesis statement about the rhetorical devices you are analyzing 2. PARAGRAPH 1: must write on irony in the essay (3 quotes) 3. PARAGRAPH 2: choose from column 2 below (3 quotes) 4. Brief Conclusion Prompt: How do rhetorical devices contribute to the essay s satire? You are going to show how TWO rhetorical devices contribute to the satire of A Modest Proposal. Irony Paragraph 1 Paragraph 2 Juxtaposition Understatement Hyperbole Grammar/Spelling/Conventions In a formal paper, you must maintain consistent and careful proofreading of silly mistakes. You need to get your paper proofread by another set of eyes before turning it in. It is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to run spell-check and grammar-check AND to find another human to read your work before turning in the final copy. Remember to stay in present tense and avoid contractions. Formatting 1-inch margins all around, double-spaced, header at 0.5" RIGHT JUSTIFIED with your last name and the page number (use the "Header" feature for this), has a title centered at the top of page one, your name is centered under the title 1. Make sure you introduce Jonathan Swift in the introduction. This will let the reader know that you are quoting him. 2. For each quote, you can still mention his name in the signal phrase, but in parentheses, please just use the paragraph number. Example: Swift uses hyperbole in the beginning of the essay to show the conditions of Ireland, It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms (1). Please note the placement of the quotes, parentheses, and period OUTSIDE the parentheses INTRODUCTION PARAGRAPH Opening: Discuss the background of the essay in some interesting way. Daniel Defoe's essay skewers the paucity of educational opportunities for women in his time. Connector: Connect your opening to your thesis (AT LEAST 2-3 sentences) In the 1700s, few women, even those who had financial and cultural access to such instruction, were educated beyond what they learned by mere exposure. Thesis/Summary Loop: What are you going to prove about rhetoric and satire? State your argument as well as the two rhetorical devices that you will be analyzing. Daniel Defoe, in his essay "An Academy for Women," uses the tools of satire to advocate for a formal process to educate women in a way more commensurate with men's education, focusing on somewhat outrageous reasons that such education would be valuable for both men and women.
Power MELCon Paragraph 1: IRONY M= Main Idea (self-created Main Idea) E= Evidence (Three quotes, properly introduced (with a signal phrase), integrated (into a sentence where you use your own words around the quote to comment on it), and cited in format) L= (Three links PER evidence; links should analyze how the wording of the quote and reflects on the main idea and forwards the satire) Con= Concluding Statement (Restating the main idea in 1-2 sentences) Fritsch 2 INDENT use of irony to point out the ridiculousness of not educating women and how it places women lower even than the view of animals... M Main Idea Defoe ironically compares women to horses, declaring that great care is taken "to breed up a good horse, and to break him well!... because he should be fit for our use. And why not a woman?" [your comment]: thus implying that women are primarily for men's use and enjoyment (28). 1. When he refers to "our use" to say that women are only there for the use of men, there is inherent irony since he is talking about rights for women but simultaneously placing women below the importance of men. 2. This is even more outrageous because, beyond declaring them less valuable than men, it compares women to animals, in fact, beasts of burden, placing them below the value even of human beings. E 1 Evidence #1, 3. In comparing women's education to the training of a horse, Defoe declares that it is necessary to "breed" women well and, like with a "good horse," to "break" her well. His comments here indicate yet again that women are only for the use of men, but also focus on the idea that, in order for women to be useful, they must have valuable parentage--thus dismissing women without "good" breeding--and that there must be a system to "break" them. His comments imply that women are inherently wild, like the horses to which he compares them, and that the education he advocates for women is necessary to modify their natural inclinations and proclivities in order for men to manage and control them better. The irony of the current situation where women are considered "so delicate, so glorious creatures...all to be only stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves" [your comment] highlights Defoe's focus that women's abilities are undervalued in their limited roles at present (36). 1. Women have so many capabilities, but they are only used for menial labor. 2. Even in the middle ages, people began to specialize in areas of skilled labor, and Defoe points out that women, while doing these everyday tasks, are not specialists, but generalists. 3. With education, women would be able to specialize, just as men do, and the irony that they are seen as both "delicate" and "glorious," and yet currently denied the opportunity to gain education E 2 Evidence #2,
and, thus, the opportunity to attain specialized skills beyond enslaved to the menial work of a household, is highlighted by the irony of Defoe's phrasing of the limitations placed on women. Fritsch 3 Defoe suggests that women should be, in his proposed academy, taught subjects In this house the persons who enter should be taught all sorts of breeding "suitable to both their genius and their quality, and, in particular, music and dancing, which it would be cruelty to bar the sex of, because they are their darlings," [your comment] which, by implying that women are prone to frivolity, somewhat undermines the very idea that women are worthy of education (22). 1. The irony runs deep in this indication that women are somewhat silly in holding "music and dancing" as "their darlings" while strongly supporting not just educational opportunities for women, but a cloister-like academy that would facilitate their overall education. 2. Defoe makes this statement only a phrase after celebrating the "genius" and "quality" of women as he purports to express a belief that women are capable of learning many things--due to that "genius"--and outlines an idea for a curriculum even beyond their "darlings" of celebratory activities. E 3 Evidence #3, 3. CON Concluding Sentences Power MELCon Paragraph 2: Choose a rhetorical device from Column 2 M= Main Idea (self-created Main Idea) E= Evidence (Three quotes, properly introduced (with a signal phrase), integrated (into a sentence where you use your own words around the quote to comment on it), and cited in format) L= (Three links PER evidence; links should analyze how the wording of the quote and reflects on the main idea and forwards the satire) Con= Concluding Statement (Restating the main idea in 1-2 sentences) INDENT juxtaposition of women with animals to compare them with non-human entities in a way that dismisses their value as fellow humans and gives men justification for considering women less valuable than men (beasts of burden and domesticated to serve men). Defoe juxtaposes women with horses, highlighting "what care do we take to breed up a good horse, and to break him well!...all because he should be fit for our use. And why not a woman?" [comment] in order to position women as beneath men, much as beasts of burden are (28). 1. Defoe's statement is particularly outrageous because it compares women to animals, in fact, beasts of burden. 2. Defoe's statement positions women as equally useful to horses, which, like women, perform a M Main Idea E 1 Evidence #1,
variety of services that men find valuable. Just as horses are a mode of transportation, a help in the work of agriculture and hauling, so too do women serve men by assisting with work men value and by being companions to men. Fritsch 4 3. Women's function as a conversational partner, as a producer of children, as those who manage the household and raise the children are but a few of the tasks that men value in women. Defoe argues that, just as one trains a horse to be more useful, so too would women be more effective at these tasks if they were educated. Conversation with women would be more stimulating and interesting if they were well educated, and they would be able better to run a household and raise and teach the children if provided with a strong education. While advocating for better education for and treatment of women, the juxtaposition of that education for women with the training of horses simultaneously devalues women as compared to men and human beings in general. Defoe is hyperbolic in his insistence that if one takes a "woman, and rob her of the benefit of education, and it follows thus:......if she be passionate, want of manners makes her termagant and a scold, which is much at one with lunatic....and from these she degenerates to be turbulent, clamorous, noisy, nasty, and 'the devil'" [your comment] along with other wildly exaggerated consequences (27). 1. By educating women, men would not have to deal with women who are "turbulent, clamorous, noisy, nasty" and a host of other horrible traits. The likelihood that a woman would become so degenerate as to be "the devil" is highly unlikely, but something only slightly less hyperbolic than this would still be a frightening or troubling outcome, which makes Defoe's claim that women should be educated more attractive. 2. Additionally, Defoe phrases this list of exaggerated traits and outcomes as the result of when societies "rob" women of "the benefit of education," emphasizing that education is a benefit, and that to deny education to women is a form of theft, and, thus, clearly a crime. E 2 Evidence #2, 3. By framing the withholding of education as criminal, and through his list of traits and how they are warped in women to whom education is not extended, Defoe's hyperbole outlines how any trait, no matter how typical, transforms into an intensely negative set of mannerisms in the absence of education. Women would be able to be better people and in better control of themselves and their natural inclinations, which would serve them better as well as providing men with a more positive group with whom they may interact. This only further builds his argument that education should be provided to women. 1. 2. 3....your comment... (#). E 3 Evidence #3,
Fritsch 5 CON Concluding Sentences CONCLUSION PARAGRAPH Summary and Thesis Loop: What did your analysis prove? (What did the reader just learn?) Restate your argument by restating your thesis and main ideas (hint: rhetorical devices). Clincher: SO WHAT? Reflect and state why this essay is important to read NOW. What purpose does it have? (AT LEAST 2-3 sentences) Jonathan Swift s A Modest Proposal: Study Guide Historical Background Over the centuries, England gradually gained a foothold in Ireland. In 1541, the parliament in Dublin recognized England s Henry VIII, a Protestant, as King of Ireland. In spite of repeated uprisings by Irish Catholics, English Protestants acquired more and more estates in Ireland. By 1703, they owned all but ten percent of the land. Meanwhile, legislation was enacted that severely limited the rights of the Irish to hold government office, purchase real estate, get an education, and advance themselves in other ways. As a result, many Irish fled to foreign lands, including America. Most of those who remained in Ireland lived in poverty, facing disease, starvation, and prejudice. It was this Ireland--an Ireland of the tyrannized and the downtrodden--that Jonathan Swift attempted to focus attention on in A Modest Proposal in 1720. Type of Work "A Modest Proposal" is an essay that uses satire to make its point. Satire may make the reader laugh at, or feel disgust for, the person or thing satirized. Impishly or sardonically, it criticizes someone or something, using wit and clever wording--and sometimes makes outrageous assertions or claims. The main purpose of a satire is to spur readers to remedy the problem under discussion. The main weapon of the satirist is verbal irony. The essay was originally printed in the form of a pamphlet. A typical pamphlet had no binding, although it sometimes had a paper cover. Writers of pamphlets, called pamphleteers, played a significant role in inflaming or resolving many of the great controversies in Europe in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, as well as in the political debate leading up to the American Revolution. Purpose Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal to call attention to abuses inflicted on Irish Catholics by well-to-do English Protestants. Swift himself was a Protestant, but he was also a native of Ireland, having been born in Dublin of English parents. He believed England was exploiting and oppressing Ireland. Many Irishmen worked farms owned by Englishmen who charged high rents--so high that the Irish were frequently unable to pay them. Consequently, many Irish farming families continually lived on the edge of starvation. Irony The dominant type of figurative language in "A Modest Proposal" is verbal irony, in which a writer or speaker says the opposite of what he means. Swift's masterly use of this device makes his main argument--that the Irish deserve better treatment from the English--powerful and dreadfully amusing. For example, to point out that the Irish should
Fritsch 6 not be treated like animals, Swift compares them to animals, as in this example: "I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs." Also, to point out that disease, famine, and substandard living conditions threaten to kill great numbers of Irish, Swift cheers their predicament as a positive development (Swift 19).